What's Cool

Vancouver Social Media Day & Canada Day

This past week has been full of celebrations. If you missed out, here’s a recap for you.

On June 24, Victoria, British Columbia became the first city to proclaim June 30 as Social Media Day. See the signed Social Media Day Proclamation. Vancouver was not far behind as you can see in this photo of Pete Cashmore holding the Vancouver Social Media Day Proclamation.

On June 30, people around the world celebrated Social Media Day, which was initiated by Mashable on June 8. Check out what people did to celebrate on Flickr and on YouTube.

Of course, Social Media wasn’t the only big event that happened this week. Canadians across the country took some time to celebrate Canada Day on July 1. Everyone had their own way of celebrating which were shared through photos and videos.

Through online media, these two celebrations, one in its inaugural year and the other being the 143rd year, allowed people to share, connect and communicate across boundaries, time zones and cultures. The way we celebrate together today is vastly different from what was possible, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, let alone 143 years ago.

The world has changed.

Victor
eMarketing Strategist

Tags: canada day, flickr, online media, social media day, Vancouver, what's cool, youtube

Love it or Hate it – The iPad

By now you have probably heard of a little something called… the iPad.  Up until recently (May 28th to be exact) you weren’t able to buy it in Canada. But now you can.. and you should.

What’s so great about the iPad you ask?  Is it really that sensational or is it just an oversized iTouch / iPhone?

The larger screen size does make it a more practical and comfortable experience when reading longer articles (eg. ebooks, pdfs, etc) or when using the multitude of Apps on the bright, crisp screen.

So what Apps are available? Apple has a featured selection and many other websites have a list of essential or top iPad Apps to download.

If you haven’t got your iPad yet, move fast and see if you can find one at the official Apple store or website. You might also find one at BestBuy, FutureShop or London Drugs. However, chances are you’ll have to wait a bit. With the 2 million iPads sold in less than 60 days since its initial release in the US, stock appears to be running low.

Do you have an iPad? How do you like it?

Victor

Tags: apple, Apps, Canada, ipad

3 Cool Google Chrome Extensions

Browser plugins or extensions are programs developed by third-parties and can be attached or integrated into your existing browser. Google Chrome, has many extensions to choose from, but here are 3 you might want to check out.

SEO Site Tools – great for someone needing to do a quick SEO analysis.

goo.gl URL Shortener – simple and quick tool for shortening your current website URL to post on your social network of choice.

Note Anywhere – this tool lets you post notes anywhere on a webpage and saves it for you to see when you visit the page again.

Tags: browser plugins, chrome extensions, google url shortener, note anywhere, seo site tools, what's cool

Impressions on Google Places

Google Places (formerly Local Business Center) was renamed in late April 2010. With this change came the addition of page statistics.

What does that mean?
That means you can now know the number of impressions (number of times users saw your business listing in local search results) and number of actions (number of times users clicked on “more info” in Maps or clicked on your website link) your business listing is receiving. The statistics also show what queries were used to trigger your business listing in the search results.

Is your company listed yet?

Tags: business listing, google, google maps, impressions, local listing, places, statistics

My Tweets Are Immortalized

Cool or scary? The Library of Congress is preserving all public tweets published on Twitter. Twitter says there is a six month delay before the tweets can be preserved. Be careful of what you tweet. Your great, great, great grand kids might read it some day. (source)

What do you think about the Library of Congress preserving your tweets?

Tags: library of congress, preservation, Social Media, tweets, Twitter